Wildfire smoke and outdoor play, what changes at the centre

For most of the years this centre has been open, the weather questions from parents were about rain and cold. In the last few summers a new one has arrived, and it now comes up every August and September: what happens to outdoor play when the sky turns grey and the air smells like a campfire.

Wildfire smoke reaches the Tri-Cities from fires that may be hundreds of kilometres away, in the BC Interior or further. The fire is not near us. The smoke is. And it can settle over Port Coquitlam for a day or for a week, with no warning beyond a forecast.

This post explains what actually changes here on those days, and why the answer is different for a four year old than it is for the adult dropping them off.

Children are not small adults where air is concerned

There is a specific reason young children are affected more, and it is worth understanding because it explains everything that follows.

Children breathe faster than adults do. A resting adult takes roughly twelve to twenty breaths a minute. A young child takes considerably more. Because of that, a child standing in the same air as their parent takes in more pollution relative to their body weight. The air is identical. The dose is not.

The second reason has to do with movement. When children exercise, they breathe harder, and they breathe more through the mouth than the nose. The nose does useful filtering work that the mouth does not. So a child running across a playground on a smoky afternoon is drawing polluted air deeper into the lungs than the same child sitting still would.

Put those together and you get an uncomfortable result. Active outdoor play, the thing that is good for children on almost every ordinary day, is the exact activity that makes poor air quality matter most.

There is a third piece. Smoky air can increase the risk of some infections for children, along with infants, older adults, pregnant people, and people living with a chronic illness. That is separate from the immediate stinging eyes and scratchy throat everyone notices, and it is part of why a week of smoke is treated differently from one bad afternoon.

The tool everyone should be using

The Air Quality Health Index is published by Environment and Climate Change Canada, working with Health Canada. It is free, it is updated through the day, and it is reported for locations across British Columbia including this part of the Lower Mainland.

What makes it useful for parents is that it does the interpretation for you. Instead of reporting a concentration of fine particles in micrograms per cubic metre, which almost nobody can act on, it reports a health risk category. You look at it, and you know whether to change your plans.

HealthLink BC's advice for wildfire season is direct: check the Air Quality Health Index before physical activity outdoors, and use it to decide whether to modify what you had planned. That is the whole instruction. It works for a family deciding about a park trip and it works for a centre deciding about the morning outdoor block.

A detail that catches people out is how fast it moves. Smoke is carried by wind, and wind shifts. A morning that looked fine can be genuinely poor by two in the afternoon, and the reverse happens just as often. Checking yesterday's reading, or checking once at breakfast and treating it as settled for the day, misses the point of a tool that updates hourly.

What actually happens here on a smoky day

Children at this centre generally get one to two hours outdoors a day. That time depends on the weather, on air quality, and on the day's schedule. Air quality is one of the standing factors, written into how the day is planned rather than something we started thinking about recently.

When the index reads poorly, the outdoor block gets shortened. When it reads badly enough, it does not happen at all. Educators make that call in the morning and revisit it, because a day can improve as easily as it can worsen.

What replaces it is not a quiet afternoon. Indoor movement and gross-motor activities take the place of the outdoor block: obstacle courses through the room, dancing, action songs, balance games, tunnels to crawl through, and music with the drums, tambourines, rhythm sticks, shakers, bells, and xylophones the centre keeps for exactly this kind of use.

That substitution is deliberate. A young child's daily need for physical activity does not shrink because the air outside is poor. If the outdoor hour disappears and nothing takes its place, the child simply gets less movement that day, and across a smoky week that adds up. Our post on what your child actually learns at daycare covers why gross-motor play carries more weight than it appears to from the outside.

The questions parents ask us in smoke season

Should I keep my child home? That depends on your child, and it is your decision rather than ours. A child with asthma, or a heart or lung condition, sits in a different position from a child with none. If you are weighing it and you are unsure, 8-1-1 connects you to a health navigator anywhere in British Columbia, at no cost, at any hour. That is a better source than a parenting forum.

What should I be watching for? The common effects of smoke are eye irritation, a runny nose, a sore throat, a mild cough, phlegm, wheezing, and headaches. Those generally pass on their own. Shortness of breath, a severe cough, chest pain, or a racing heart are a different category and need medical attention promptly.

Do masks help a small child? Properly fitted respirators are not designed for young children and generally do not seal on a small face, so the protection an adult gets from one does not transfer. Reducing exposure works better at this age: less time outside, less hard exercise while outside, and cleaner indoor air.

Should we close the windows? Closing windows and doors does reduce how much smoky air comes indoors. Heat is the complication. On a day that is both hot and smoky, the risk from heat is larger than the risk from smoke for most people, so keeping cool comes first. Recognising that trade-off in advance beats discovering it at four in the afternoon in a closed-up house.

Judging a day, and why the index beats looking outside

The instinct on a smoky morning is to look at the sky and decide. That works badly, for two reasons worth knowing.

Visible haze and health risk are not the same thing. A day can look dramatic, with an orange sun and a strong smell, while the index sits in a range where ordinary activity is fine for most people. The reverse also happens: a day that looks merely overcast can carry a poor reading, because the particles that matter for health are too small to see.

The other reason is that people stop noticing. A household living through the fourth day of smoke has adjusted to the smell and the light, and the fourth day feels better than the first even when the readings say otherwise. Adaptation is a feature of noses rather than of air.

An index reading takes both of those out of the decision. It is a number, it is measured, and it says the same thing to a family that arrived yesterday as it does to one that has been breathing it all week.

That is why the call here is made against the reading rather than against how the morning looks from the front step, and why it gets revisited during the day instead of being settled once at eight in the morning.

Why we would rather explain this than simply do it

A centre could handle smoke days silently. Shorten the outdoor block, say nothing, and most parents would never notice. We would rather families understood the reasoning, for two reasons.

The first is that the same decision comes up at home. Weekends exist. If a parent knows why we cut outdoor time on Friday, they have what they need to make their own call on Saturday, which is when their child is with them.

The second is that smoke season is not going away. Families moving to the Tri-Cities from places where this was never a consideration are meeting it for the first time, and there is no reason for each family to work it out alone.

If you want to see how a normal day is put together, and where the outdoor block sits within it, our daily schedule lays it out hour by hour, and the post on a day at our centre walks through the same day from a child's point of view.

What we will not tell you

We will not tell you whether your particular child should be outside on a particular day. We are educators. We know how a room of children is behaving and we know what the index says, and both of those are within our competence. Your child's asthma, or their history with respiratory infections, belongs to you and your doctor.

Any centre that gives you a confident medical answer about your own child on a smoky day is going past what it can actually know. What we can tell you is what we did that day and why, which is what this post is.

Frequently asked questions

Why is wildfire smoke worse for young children than for adults?

Children breathe faster than adults, so they take in more polluted air relative to their body weight. That difference alone means a child standing in the same air as a parent receives a larger dose of what is in it. Their airways are also still developing, which is why guidance for smoky days treats infants and young children as a higher-risk group alongside older adults and people with chronic illness.

Does running around outside make smoky air more harmful?

It does. When children exercise they breathe harder, and they breathe more through the mouth than the nose. The nose filters some of what passes through it, so mouth breathing lets more pollution travel deeper into the lungs. Active outdoor play is exactly the situation where poor air quality matters most, which is the reason we change the plan rather than simply shortening it.

What is the Air Quality Health Index?

It is a public information tool published by Environment and Climate Change Canada in collaboration with Health Canada. It reports current air quality as a health risk category rather than as a raw pollutant number, so a parent or an educator can look at it and know what to do without interpreting chemistry. It updates through the day, which matters because smoke conditions can change within hours.

Where do I check the air quality for Port Coquitlam?

The Air Quality Health Index is published on the Government of Canada website and reported for locations across British Columbia. Many weather apps carry it as well. Whichever source you use, check it on the day rather than relying on yesterday's reading, since a wind shift can change conditions between morning and afternoon.

Does the centre cancel outdoor play when it is smoky?

Outdoor time here is generally one to two hours a day, and it depends on weather, air quality, and the day's schedule. Air quality is one of the standing reasons that block gets shortened or dropped. On those days educators run indoor movement and gross-motor activities so children still get the physical activity the day is built around.

What do children do indoors when outdoor time is cut?

Movement activities that use the body the way outdoor play does. Obstacle courses, dancing, action songs, balance games, and music with the centre's instruments. The aim is real physical activity rather than a quiet afternoon at the table, because the amount of movement a young child needs each day does not go down because the air outside is poor.

Can smoke make my child more likely to catch something?

Smoky air can increase the risk of some infections for children, as well as for infants, older adults, pregnant people, and people living with chronic illness. That is a separate concern from the immediate irritation smoke causes, and it is one of the reasons health guidance treats several days of smoke differently from a single bad afternoon.

What symptoms should I watch for on a smoky day?

Eye irritation, a runny nose, a sore throat, a mild cough, phlegm, wheezing, or a headache are the common ones, and they usually pass without medical care. Shortness of breath, a severe cough, chest pain, or a racing heart are different and need attention right away. A child with asthma or another respiratory condition deserves closer watching through a smoke event.

Should I keep my child home from daycare when the air is bad?

That is a decision for your family, and it depends on your child's health rather than on a single number. A child with asthma or a heart or lung condition may need a different plan from a child with none. If you are unsure, you can call 8-1-1 in British Columbia and speak to a health navigator, and it costs nothing.

Does keeping the windows closed actually help indoors?

Closing windows and doors reduces how much outdoor air comes in, which helps when smoke is heavy outside. Heat complicates it, because on a hot smoky day the risk from heat can be larger than the risk from smoke for most people. Where those two collide, staying cool takes priority, which is a judgement worth making deliberately rather than by habit.

Before you visit

If your child has asthma or another respiratory condition, tell us before their first day, and we will build it into their file alongside allergies and any other medical need. Families touring in late summer often ask how we handle smoke, and we are happy to walk through it in person. Contact us to arrange a visit.